


Mercy Above This Sceptered Sway

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Honor, Justice, Knight & Squire, Mercy - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-05-01 12:44:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 13,025
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14520858
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: In Legann, Roald learns the meaning of mercy.





	1. The Difference between Kings and Their Champions

“The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed: it blesseth him that gives and him that takes. ’Tis mightiest in the mightiest; it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His scepter shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty where doth sit the dread and fear of kings, but mercy is above this sceptered sway.” —William Shakespeare

The Difference between Kings and Their Champions

“I hate running,” Alan of Pirate Swoop panted his gripe as he and Roald ran along Legann’s sandy shore. The sun setting behind the ragged shadows of the coastal bluffs and the salty wind whipping off the ocean should have chilled Roald along with the sweat lining his back, but he could still feel his muscles and skin burning beneath the June sky. “Will I truly need to run as a knight, anyway? It’s not as if I’d want to flee from battle.” 

“You might have to run to one or in one to rescue somebody,” pointed out Roald between pauses to breath air deep into his straining lungs. Running through thick sand in blistering heat was an exertion even for someone as young and strong as a squire was expected to be. “Besides running builds endurance. That’s what Lord Wyldon would tell us pages when he used to order us to run along the ramparts until we wished we could faint into the stones.” 

“What other delightful lessons did Lord Wyldon teach you during these runs?” Alan’s mouth assumed the contemptuous curl he always wore whenever he mentioned the training master who warred with his mother. 

“That if we’re going to vomit, we ought to ensure that we do it where the breeze can’t blow it back in our faces.” Roald remembered Lord Wyldon’s terse instructions on this subject as he and Alan reached the boulder that marked the end of their run, where they slowed to a stop and slid their water canteens from their belts. 

“He sounds a charmer who could woo anyone with his sweet talk.” Alan gulped down his water so noisily that Roald couldn’t resist a mental comparison to a horse drinking from a trough. 

“He taught us well.” Roald sipped at his canteen, wishing he could gulp his water like Alan did, but a prince was never supposed to ruin his own dignity or risk affronting others by chugging any drink no matter how thirsty he was or how informal the company. It was one of the thousand strict rules that governed his life, giving him the maneuverability of manacles. “He just didn’t teach us kindly.” 

“Lord Imrah teaches me well and kindly.” Alan’s tone was a peculiar cross between the smug and the grateful. “I’m glad to be under his tutelage and not Lord Wyldon’s, who would’ve had a grudge against me because of my mother.” 

“My parents and Lord Wyldon are often at odds politically.” Roald was determined to be as fair to his training master as his training master had been to him. Justice demanded it, and stern Lord Wyldon might not have earned Roald’s affection but he had proven worthy of that much loyalty at least. “Yet he was never anything less than just in his dealings with me. I was never a hostage in any of his battles with my parents.” 

“You’re the Crown Prince.” Alan snorted. “It would take iron nerves to chance offending you when you control the country’s future.” 

“Lord Wyldon has iron nerves.” Roald thought Lord Wyldon’s valiant rescue of Liam, Lianne, and Jasson should have answered any question anybody in the realm might have once had about the training master’s courage. “If he does something, it’s because he believes it to be right, not because he is cowering in fear of the consequences of failing to do it.” 

Staring out at the Emerald Ocean, glittering with copper and gold flecks that echoed the stains in the sky as the sun sank behind the bluffs, Roald recalled how his father had once collapsed with a sigh into a sofa after a meeting Roald had suspected was merely a fancy word for an argument. There had been furrows to drive a plow through in Papa’s brow, but when he had spoken, he had sounded weary to the marrow rather than furious. 

Gazing into Roald’s wide eyes as Roald was now staring into the churning vastness of the ocean, Papa had explained that a person might disagree with Lord Wyldon but they couldn’t accuse him of being dishonorable since he was sincerely devoted to acting according to what he saw as virtue. Somehow those words had stuck in his head like sap to a tree, encouraging him to try to view every situation from all possible perspectives. His father’s words had opened the idea that couldn’t be closed: that those who opposed him weren’t motivated by malice but a different definition of righteousness. It made the world a less hostile place yet a more complicated one where black and white morality was replaced by a rainbow of ethics. 

“He isn’t so fair or so right when he slanders my mother, is he?” Alan kicked up a storm of sand that threatened to blind them both. 

“No, he isn’t.” Roald hesitated and then went on despite Alan’s scowl, “Nobody can be entirely fair, right, or rational all the time. We must allow—or at least forgive—everybody one area where they display a certain irrationality and intractability. Otherwise we would be left with no allies.”

“Is that something you learned from your father?” Alan’s green eyes were tempestuous seas.

“Yes.” Nonplussed, Roald nodded. “Why?” 

“It’s the opposite of what my mother taught me.” Alan’s shrug was more cold than casual as the day died around them. “She taught me that we always fight injustice and never make excuses for it since it will only grow like a weed in a garden if we don’t uproot it on sight. I guess that’s the difference between kings and their champions.” 

Roald opened his mouth to counter that as King’s Champion, Sir Alanna would never have permitted anyone—even the son who tried to follow in her footsteps—to insult her king without a challenge, but before he could begin, Alan started to dash through the sand back to Legann castle, which towered in the distance, a stronghold for Conte rulers for centuries dating to the last civil war that had split Tortall in bitterness and blood.


	2. A Noose to Hang With

A Noose to Hang With

“Your strokes should be thin and delicate, my dear, not rough and thick.” Lady Marielle’s chiding cut through the parlor that evening as she leaned over her ten-year-old daughter Mathilde’s painting. With a sweeping gesture at the bowl of plump, purple plums Mathilde—nicknamed Mattie—was supposed to be representing in art, she added, “Please try to remember that you’re painting a bowl of fruit, not a battle. I shudder to think what the priestesses will say of your artwork when you arrive at the convent with your clumsy brushstrokes.” 

“If I never arrive at the convent, I can never shame this family before the priestesses.” Mattie, Roald could see from his cushioned chair, had smeared her paint from the desperateness of another appeal not to be sent to the convent at the end of the week. She never lost an opportunity to protest what she termed as her exile to the convent. 

“You shame our family with your endless pouting about going to the convent,” snapped Julienne, Lord Imrah’s younger daughter, two years Mattie’s junior. Her eyes were sharp and accusing as needles as she glared up from her embroidery. She had been hunched over her needlepoint, mastering a new stitch under the guidance of her mother’s maidservant Claire, who had entered service at Legann castle upon Roald’s request after a Stormwing strike on her village had maimed her. “You should be grateful for all the beautiful new dresses you’re getting and all the friends you’ll make training to become a proper lady as long as you don’t whine at them as you do us.” 

“I don’t want to leave home to be educated in what I’m already learning here.” Mattie’s eyes were swollen as plums with unshed tears. 

“Every daughter must leave her childhood home, Mattie. The sooner you accept that, the less painful the inevitable separation will be.” Lady Marielle sighed and glanced at first Roald then Alan. “Duty demands that sons must leave home as well. Consider you father’s wards for proof of that.” 

“Alan chose to come here.” Mattie’s words were an abrupt reminder to Roald that he was in Lord Imrah’s charge because his father had ordered it, not because he had chosen Lord Imrah. There was another difference between Alan and him, he realized with a jolt. Alan acted according to his own will; Roald obeyed his father’s as unquestioningly as expected of a dutiful son. “Why can’t I chose who educates me? Princess Kalasin studies under the Countess of King’s Reach. Why can’t I be educated at King’s Reach. If King’s Reach is good enough for a princess, it should be good enough for me.” 

“My sister writes me that the Countess of King’s Reach is a formidable woman with a long list of strict rules,” Roald put in seriously, thinking that, as the peasants pointed out with the practicality characteristic of their place in society, the grass wasn’t always greener on the other side of the fence. “My sister would have preferred to be sent to a convent if her letters are any indication.” 

Before Mattie could marshal further arguments against her dispatch to a convent, Sebastian, the captain of Lord Imrah’s guard, appeared in the parlor doorway with a deep bow. 

“Enter and report please, captain.” Lord Imrah waved Sebastian into the room even as he arched an eyebrow at the captain’s unanticipated arrival. 

“There’s been another pirate attack along the coast, my lord.” Sebastian’s tone was the grim one of a man who had seen and spoken of too much death in his lifetime. 

“That’s the third raid in two weeks.” Lord Imrah’s jaw was so tight that Roald’s clenched in unwitting imitation. 

“Yes, my lord.” Sebastian offered a grave nod. “The pirates stuck Coveton five miles south of here at high tide. Two of our squads and a squad of Queen’s Riders are providing what support they can to the villagers who managed to flee and hide from the raid, but most of the folk were captured to be sold as slaves in the Copper Isles or Carthak while what valuables they had were stolen in loot.” 

Roald’s blood boiled in his veins, and his fingers tore into his palms. He longed to hunt down every single pirate who had captured an innocent villager to be sold into slavery in a strange land and sentence each one who had partaken in such a vile raid to a life of dreamless drudgery in the Legann quarries. Perhaps that would teach them how wicked it was to treat people as chattel and beasts of burden. Yet he recognized with a blinding, helpless fury even that wouldn’t be justice for the pirates’ victims, who would still be enslaved so far from the only home they had ever known and ripped apart from everybody they had ever loved. Nothing Roald did could restore what those villagers had lost to the pirates. He was a prince, and he couldn’t save them or even bring those who had wronged them to true justice. 

“I wonder if any of the slaves will be sold to a convent where they have to spend their days stitching and strumming at lutes.” Mattie fired her remark like an arrow at her parents. 

“If I hear you compare your life of luxury to a slave’s again, I’ll sew your mouth shut, Mathilde.” Lady Marielle’s threat made Mattie wince, and Roald couldn’t fault her for the flinch. After all, Lady Marielle was a redoubtable woman not to be trifled with at the risk of provoking her fearsome ire. 

“It is past time we made a noose for the pirates to hang themselves.” Lord Imrah’s pronouncement, unshakeable as bedrock, should have been a solace to Roald, imbuing him with a sense of purpose if not hope, but instead it caused a shiver to run like a cold mountain river down the length of his spine. In Legann, he recalled with a start, pirates were hanged, and their rotting corpses displayed in the harbors and inlets peppering the coastline. This was intended to discourage and disconcert any other seafaring criminals. How effective the moldering corpses were as deterrents, only pirates knew, but Roald believed they made an eerie sight and created a terrible stench—of death and decay—especially in the heat of summer. “There must be a pattern to these raids. We will find it and put a halt to them.”


	3. Time and Tide

Time and Tide

“The best place,” Lord Imrah continued, his hawk gaze flying from Sebastian to Alan and Roald, “ to discover such a pattern is, of course…” 

“The library,” Roald, who had trained under Lord Imrah long enough to predict how his knightmster’s mind gathered and interpreted information under such circumstances, finished when it became clear that Lord Imrah was waiting for someone to complete the flow of his thoughts. 

“Precisely.” Lord Imrah nodded his approval as he got to his feet. “Why is that, lad?” 

“You’ll have maps of the region the pirates keep attacking.” Roald rose along with Sebastian and Alan to follow Lord Imrah up the winding steps to the library, the sound of their shoes echoing eerily against the granite floors and walls. “It’s hard to see a pattern for the raids without looking at a map of the region where they’re happening, sir.” 

“Yes, and preferably more than one map to provide a broader overview of the area with each map offering different information about the region.” Lord Imrah turned his attention to Alan as they entered the library lined with shelves containing books, records, and maps of fief Legann. “If I wanted to understand the pirate attacks, what information on a map might be useful, Alan?” 

Alan hesitated before venturing, “The depths of the Emerald Ocean near the villages that were raided. That would tell us if the pirate ship can’t land or access certain places because of ocean depths, my lord.” 

“An important insight.” Lord Imrah ruffled Alan’s rust gold hair as he arched an eyebrow at Roald. “What information would you wish to add to that, Roald?” 

“The region’s tides.” Roald cocked his head in consideration. “Some places might be more accessible or easier to flee from depending upon the tides, my lord.” 

“An excellent point.” Lord Imrah nudged Roald toward a bookcase laden with dozens of rolled maps. “Please show Alan where maps of the ocean depths and tides may be found.” 

“Yes, sir,” answered Roald, leading Alan to a stack of scrolls where mages had transposed tidal patterns and ocean depths acquired through a magical sounding technique developed by the Old Ones who had revolutionized magecraft, engineering, and architecture in the Eastern Lands during centuries now lost in the mists of time and drowned in the tide of change. 

He handed a crinkling parchment map of the ocean depths south of Port Legann to Alan and himself carried over the scroll illustrating the tides in that region where the pirates were raiding to a table lit by flickering sunset orange candles at which Lord Imrah and Sebastian were awaiting their return. Together he and Alan carefully unfurled the parchment maps, tucking the edges under falcon paperweights to prevent folding. 

“The first village raided was Oceanside two weeks ago, the second was Greenville a week ago, and the third was Coveton today.” Lord Imrah marked each unlucky location he named on both maps with a coin that shone in the candlelight. “Oceanside is about twenty miles from here as the crow flies, Greenville is within spitting distance of ten, and Coveton is close enough to five miles from here you’d have to squint to see the difference. All are on the shores of inlets—“

“That are particularly accessible at high tide.” Alan was so eager at uncovering the pattern of the attacks that he interrupted Lord Imrah without apology or invitation. “They also have similar ocean depths. There truly is a pattern to these attacks, sir.” 

“Very true.” Lord Imrah seemed satisfied rather than irritated by Alan’s interjection. “Where does the pattern suggest that the pirates will strike next?” 

Roald, who had been scrutinizing the maps even as he listened to the discussion, indicated a town on the map nearest him situated about three miles south of Legann castle. “Belmar, my lord.” 

When Lord Imrah shot him a mildly prodding glance that urged him to elaborate, Roald went on, “It’s almost equidistant between here and Coveton. More importantly, it’s located in an inlet with the water depths and the tide flow consistent with the other places the pirates attacked.” 

“Well-reasoned, Roald.” Lord Imrah’s smile reminded Roald of a cat planning to pounce on a mouse poised to steal cheese from the kitchens as he asked Sebastian, “When would you anticipate the next attack, captain?” 

“A week from now, my lord,” Sebastian responded at once. 

“I think the same.” Lord Imrah slid the paperweights from the maps and rolled them up to be restored to their shelf. “Captain, you will dispatch three squads to lie in wait for these pirates outside Belmar. At the first sign of any suspicious ship approaching Belmar, a. courier will be sent to the castle so I may ride out with reinforcements to bring out pirates to justice. The noose is tightening around the pirates. Soon they will feel it around their throats, squeezing them to death.” 

Roald stared at the wooden table and tried not to imagine it swinging sharply downward—a doorway to the harsh judgment promised in the Black God’s realm—like the trap beneath a gallows when a criminal was hanged. In his mind, he preferred to attach less grim images to justice, the untarnished ideal that governed his life and ruled his soul. He wouldn’t resist hanging the pirates as justice demanded but he wouldn’t relish the gruesome spectacle as the jeering mob would. He would respect and fear the law as would be expected of any loyal subject—or prince—of Tortall. 

The thought of the trap beneath the gallows however much Roald strove to block it from his mind did provide him with an idea for a farewell gift to Mattie to honor her departure for the convent, which he ordered with specifications from a craftsmen in Port Legann and presented to Mattie with a gallant bow in the parlor three nights later. 

“It’s a beautiful writing desk, thank you, Roald.” Despite the gratitude carved into the grin splitting her cheeks, Mattie’s words were tart as a lemon from Carthak. Obviously she didn’t appreciate the present enough to be mollified about leaving Legann. “Perhaps I will use it to write to my parents about how miserable I am at the convent.”

“Such complaints might be best kept secret, Mattie,” suggested Roald with all the diplomacy he could muster. In his opinion, it was always wisest to keep your own counsel about your complaints especially those most properly directed toward your parents. Complaining to parents only insulted your pride and never changed anything. At least that was the case if your parents were as stubborn as his were. “This writing desk was built to hide your secrets.” 

When Mattie’s forehead knotted with confusion, Roald checked that Julienne and Claire were bent over their stitchery, Lady Marielle was reviewing the next day’s recipes that the cooks had given to her for approval, and Lord Imrah was engrossed in a chess match. Leaning forward, he murmured out of the corner of his mouth for the hearing and sight of Mattie alone, “Press the pink rose on the left side, and a false bottom will open where you can store your secrets.” 

“So I will have some freedom at the convent, after all.” A load seemed to have been removed from Mattie’s shoulders, and she slumped into the sofa, ignoring her mother’s reprimand at her undignified posture. Watching the relief that flooded her, Roald thought that everyone needed space for their secrets, a private place to be truly themselves beyond anyone’s expectations.


	4. Start Thinking as a Man

Start Thinking as a Man

Two days after Mathilde left in a carriage for the convent, Roald rode beside Lord Imrah at the head of the column of reinforcements marching toward Belmar. Behind the crest of the last bluff before Belmar, they took cover and waited for the scout Lord Imrah had dispatched to investigate the situation in the village to return. 

When the scout crept, silent and stealthy as a field mouse, up to Lord Imrah’s side, Roald could hear him whisper, “The squads and villagers who stayed to fight have the pirates holed up by the coast, surrounded on all sides so they can’t flee to their ship. Like cornered animals, the pirates are fighting fiercely, but by my count, they’ve lost ten men to our five, my lord.” 

Finished his report, the scout saluted and faded into the ranks as Lord Imrah heightened his voice enough to be heard by every solider yet not so much that it might be carried on the wind as warning to the pirates, “Our enemy is trapped along the coast, unable to retreat to their ship. Our calvary will descend on them from along the ocean, our archers will find positions on the high ground where they can rain arrows down on the pirates, and our infantry will attack from the front, forcing the pirates back to be broken against the iron of our cavalry.” 

His visor raised to be seen and heard clearly, Lord Imrah arched an eyebrow in an invitation for questions. When none were forthcoming, he continued crisply, “Any pirate worth his salt will know that he faces hanging if caught, so he will fight to the death since he has no hope of clemency. Try to injure instead of kill so the pirates may be brought to justice as an example for others, but if the choice is your life or a pirate’s, take the pirate’s without hesitation.” 

This proclamation was greeted with a whooping battle cry accompanied by a flourishing of spears and swords from the assembled squads. 

“Cavalry to me,” barked Lord Imrah over the sound of men whipping themselves into a fighting frenzy. When the cavalry fell in behind him and Roald, Lord Imrah slammed his visor shut. 

Roald was about to do the same when he saw a slight figure mounted on a sprightly pony melt into the horsemen. His forehead furrowing since that figure could only be Alan, but Alan shouldn’t have been here. Though Alan had pleaded to be involved in this adventure, Lord Imrah had forbidden it in no uncertain terms. Then again, if Alan had inherited even a modicum of his parents’ notorious stubbornness, Roald supposed that prohibiting would function more as an encouragement than a deterrent to Alan. 

“Something captured your attention, Roald?” Lord Imrah’s frown didn’t need to be visible through his visor for Roald to sense its existence. 

“No, sir.” Roald averted his eyes from Alan immediately. He wouldn’t be the one who informed his knightmaster of Alan’s defiance. It would have been a betrayal of the code of honor between boys to rat out Alan, after all.

“Then focus on not getting killed, if you please.” Lord Imrah’s gauntlet reached out to slap Roald’s visor closed with a clang that jolted Roald’s mind away from Alan and onto the impending battle with the pirates. 

He cantered alongside Lord Imrah, his heart pounding in concert with his horse’s thudding hooves, to the spot along the beach where the ring of pirates were encircled between the squads who had originally been assigned to Belmar and the villagers who aided them. When the calvary were arrayed around him and Lord Imrah lifted his sword in a signal to press the attack, Roald charged forward and tried to focus on not getting killed while keeping an eye toward Alan’s safety. 

A pirate snatched at Roald’s saddle, trying to tug him off Shadow. With a savage kick of his spur, Roald dislodged the man. Then, with a swift slash of his sword, sliced off a hand that was only thinly protected by a leather glove. 

A boy with eyes the tumultuous sea green of Jasson’s who looked even younger than Roald’s youngest brother confronted Roald next. Roald couldn’t bring himself to maim a boy who was younger than him who reminded him of his own flesh and blood. He didn’t know—because there was never any time for thinking in the heat of battle—whether that mercy was a prickling of honor or an insidious weakness. Whether weakness or strength, his mercy made him redirect the boy’s spear thrust so that it struck the boy’s skull. Doubtlessly unconscious and seeing stars, the boy collapsed. 

Roald didn’t have an instant to spare on a hope that the boy wouldn’t be trampled amid the flailing hooves of the cavalry before he was engaged by another pirate. He parried the pirate’s blow and then swung his sword through the skin and muscle of the pirate’s upper arm, severing a tendon that would incapacitate the pirate for the remainder of the fight. 

He was looking around for his next foe when he saw an arrow penetrate the chinks of chainmail shielding Alan’s shoulder. As if from a league’s distance, he saw in a haze Alan sink against his saddle. He urged Shadow to kick a path to Alan, but it still seemed to take an eternity too long to reach Alan, whom he had to heal, because it was his fault that Alan was injured since he had remained quiet about Alan sneaking into the ranks of horsemen. 

All he could hear was the whinnying of horses, the clash of weapons, and the moans and prayers of dying men as he managed to coax a bleary, barely conscious Alan onto his saddle. Taking care to avoid jostling Alan’s wounded shoulder, Roald smelled nothing but flood and was filled with the gut-wrenching conviction that the entire world was conspiring to kill him and Alan. 

Alan needed an infirmary, and Roald must have called out a question of where to find one without realizing it, because an infantryman, part of a squad initially stationed in Belmar, shouted over the fray, “We set up an infirmary in the village square, Your Highness. It’s the biggest stone cottage in the square. I’ll cover Your Highness’s retreat.” 

Roald tilted his sword in a grateful acknowledgement as the soldier climbed onto Alan’s pony in order to increase the pony’s chances of surviving the chaos. He didn’t see anything else as he charged Shadow away from the fight and toward the village. 

The village streets were red dirt with puddles of mud where blood had seeped into the ground like water, and Roald could follow a terrible trail of bloodstains to the cottage the soldier had described. In the infirmary, Roald maneuvered Alan onto a cot and cajoled him into drinking tea spiced with herbs to dull his nerves when Roald removed the arrow from his shoulder. 

“Tastes like poison.” Alan sputtered as Roald tipped the cup of tea to his lips. 

“Drink, don’t talk.” Roald kept the cup against Alan’s mouth until Alan had reluctantly swallowed every drop. “We don’t want you choking.” 

When Alan finished the tea, Roald placed the cup on a table beside Alan’s cot and began removing the armor from Alan’s shoulder, his movements ginger to ensure that he didn’t disturb the arrow pierced into the skin. Once Alan’s armor was off, Roald carefully cut a hole in Alan’s shirt so he could examine the arrow’s entry. To his relief, the arrow didn’t appear to have landed deeply. 

He summoned cooling, healing magic into his fingers, tracing them along the flesh outside of Alan’s wound to promote a feeling of numbness when he yanked out the arrow. Gripping the arrow with fingers he refused to allow to tremble because a nervous healer was a menace to patients, Roald remarked as if he were discussing dinner, “When I count to ten, I’m removing this arrow. Duke Baird calls this procedure reduction because it reduces the pain by—ten!” 

Roald ripped the arrow from Alan’s shoulder as Alan gave a gasp and yelp. Studying the arrow he had torn from Alan, Roald gave a grim nod of satisfaction when he saw that none of the tip lingered in Alan’s skin. To ward against infection which could kill more soldiers than arrows, he smeared a cloth soaked with salve across Alan’s weeping wound and wrapped it in a bandage. 

Roald was just returning the bandages to the table of healing supplies beside Alan’s cot when Lord Imrah strode into the infirmary. His hawk gaze fixing on Alan and Roald, he wended his way over to them. Sitting on the foot of Alan’s cot, he observed, soft and stern, “I’m glad that you’ll recover in one piece, Alan. At your age, your safety is my first priority since your parents entrusted you to my authority and education. I can’t keep you safe and honor my agreement with your parents if you disobey and deceive me.” 

“I’m sorry, my lord.” Alan’s chin drooped. “I thought I was ready to face the pirates, but I was wrong.” 

“Every boy makes mistakes when he’s young.” Lord Imrah guided Alan’s chin up with a thumb. “As long as a boy learns from his mistakes, they’re only proof that his best is yet to come.” 

“Yes, sir.” Alan itched at his bandage as if desperate to be free of it already. “Are you going to punish me?” 

“An arrow to the arm is a harsher punishment than any I would have given you.” Lord Imrah gestured at Alan’s injured shoulder. “I consider our account square, Alan, but if you ever defy me like this again, I will regard it as my duty to punish you properly. Understood?” 

When Alan offered a serious if weary nod, Lord Imrah nudged Alan’s head toward his pillow, ordering, “Rest now, lad.” 

Alan’s eyes drifted shut as if they had been awaiting this command and only stayed open until they received it. Once Alan’s eyes had closed, Lord Imrah rose. “Come, Roald. I would have a word with you outside.” 

Something in Lord Imrah’s manner made Roald’s stomach squirm, but at least his knightmaster didn’t keep him in suspense too long. As soon as they were perched on the rungs of the wooden fence circling the cottage that had been appropriated as an infirmary, Lord Imrah asked in a tone that suggested he knew the answer, “You were aware before before the battle that Alan was here to fight in it.” 

“Yes, my lord.” Roald had the nasty impression that he was digging his own grave with every word even as he attempted to defend himself. It was horrible to blame himself for Alan’s injury. It would be infinitely worse to have his knightmaster blame him for the same crime. “I swear I didn’t know in advance of arriving here what Alan was planning. I didn’t plot against you or anything. I just saw Alan right before we rode into battle.” 

“That would be what distracted you before the battle.” Lord Imrah’s face hardened under a knotting brow. “Unless my memory has forsaken me, I recall asking you what captured your attention, providing a perfect opportunity for you to tell me of Alan’s whereabouts as you should have as soon as you noticed them without my prompting, squire.” 

“I should have.” Roald’s fingers worried at the wooden fence until a splinter jabbed under his skin as painfully as divided loyalties. “I couldn’t, though, sir, because then I would’ve been ratting out Alan.” 

If there was anything Roald had learned in the rough-and-tumble world of the pages’ wing, it was that disembowelment was too noble an end for those who ratted out their peers. 

“Ah, the rigid honor code of boys where secrets are more important than safety.” Lord Imrah’s irony vanished as he grasped Roald’s shoulders and delivered a sharp shake. “I can excuse Alan for thinking like a boy, but at your age, as Crown Prince, you must stop thinking as a boy, and start thinking as a man. A man doesn’t fear being scorned for telling the truth, and a man reports any relevant information to his commander before a battle instead of hoarding it to himself as a squirrel would an acorn.” 

“Yes, my lord.” Roald bit his lip. Lord Imrah hadn’t shouted as Lord Wyldon would have but that only made his reprimand more stinging to Roald’s ears. he had failed as a squire, as a solider, as a boy growing awkwardly into manhood, and as a prince. No shout could be more condemning than that. “I see that I was wrong and could have gotten Alan killed with my silence.” 

“Good to hear.” Lord Imrah’s unyielding gaze lanced into Roald’s. “Then you’ll have no problem writing an essay for me upon our return to Legann castle, elaborating on all the flaws in your judgement and how you will avoid them in the future.” 

“I’ll have no problem writing about that, sir.” Roald was ashamed to feel the ache of saltwater welling in his eyes. Blinking it back before it could trickle down his cheeks, he added in an instinctual appeal for affection, “I was trying to do the right thing. It just turned out to be wrong, but I promise I’ll do better in the future.” 

“I know you will.” Lord Imrah’s squeeze on Roald’s shoulder was gentle and reassuring after his earlier implacability. “You just need to start thinking as a man, not a boy, Roald.”


	5. Responsibility and Redemption

Responsibility and Redemption

“I can’t believe Lord Imrah is making you write a punishment essay because of something I did.” Alan frowned as he reclined against the pillows on his cot in the infirmary at Legann castle where Roald was visiting as he penned his punishment essay for his knightmaster which he hoped to give Lord Imrah after he had finished seeing Alan. 

“You can’t believe it because that’s not what happened.” Roald glanced up from his essay to ensure Alan understood this crucial point about Roald’s culpability and Lord Imrah’s judgement. “Lord Imrah assigned me a punishment essay for something I did, not something you did.” 

“The something you did was not reporting me to Lord Imrah when you noticed me slipping in among the cavalry.” Alan was plainly unconvinced by this argument. “You’re still being punished for my crime. That’s not fair.” 

“It’s perfectly fair.” Roald might have thought as Alan did if Lord Imrah hadn’t explained how his silence could have killed Alan and how a warrior must always report important decisions to his commander. Roald’s silence had befitted a young boy, not one on the cusp of manhood. A prince had to be more responsible, and Lord Imrah was duty-bound to teach Roald that. Roald couldn’t disagree with the reasoning behind Lord Imrah’s discipline. “I could have gotten you killed, Alan. Lord Imrah has to punish me for that or he’d be shirking his obligations as my knightmaster. I accept and respect that.” 

“I could have gotten me killed.” Alan jabbed a finger that wasn’t attached to the arm with a shoulder in his bandage at his chest. Roald wasn’t certain if Alan was determined to take the blame for his own transgression or he just didn’t appreciate the magnitude of Roald’s offense. “If Lord Imrah wants to hold you accountable for not ratting me out, he should have punished me for disobeying him like I did instead of only threatening to do so if I defined him like that again. It’s unfair that I wasn’t assigned a punishment essay as well.” 

“You’ve an injured shoulder.” Roald stifled a smile at the fact that he had to remind Alan of his wound even as Alan scratched at his bandage because he didn’t want Alan to imagine he mocked Alan’s misery. “It would be a more terrible torture than any inflicted on the pirates in Lord Imrah’s dungeon to make you write a punishment essay after taking an arrow to your shoulder.” 

A healer, obviously Alan’s itching as a cue to change his bandage, swept over to the cot. As she cut Alan’s old bandage off and wrapped a new one about his wound, Roald could see Alan yawning, so he decided to bid farewell to Alan and carry his now completed punishment essay to Lord Imrah for approval. 

He found Lord Imrah in his study, forehead knitting as he reviewed court documents and prepared formal charges against the pirates for their upcoming trial in Port Legann, which would be held in three days and would attract a bloodthirsty crowd like flies circling a dunghill since the people of Legann despised few criminals with the intensity they did pirates. No doubt that seemingly instinctual loathing was a consequence of Legann’s coastal position. 

“My punishment essay, sir.” Roald bowed as he presented his essay to Lord Imrah. Though he felt he had done a good job penning his essay, he still waited on tenterhooks as his knightmaster read it with the hawk-eyed scrutiny he focused on everything else that came under his beak nose. 

“You seem to have a firm understanding of how flawed your judgement regarding reporting Alan’s presence to me was, squire.” Lord Imrah folded up the scroll that bore Roald’s punishment essay and placed it on the edge of his desk before gesturing for Roald to slip into the chair across from him, an indication that Roald was fully forgiven and restored to his knightmaster’s good graces. “I sincerely hope that you’ll never have to write me another such essay.” 

“That is my true wish as well, my lord.” The slight smile shadowing Lord Imrah’s lips was all the invitation Roald needed to offer a wry grin. 

“If only all my offenders could be reformed as easily and quickly as you, Roald.” Lord Imrah’s gaze drifted meaningfully toward t˙e stack of formal charges he was preparing on his desk. 

“Younger people are more open to influence and change.” Roald spotted the ideal opening to indirectly ask about the fate of the boy who had Jasson’s eyes whom he had knocked unconscious in the fight against the pirates. “How old was the youngest captured pirate?” 

“He claims to be ten.” Lord Imrah’s answer confirmed that the boy Roald couldn’t help but take an interest in was alive though Roald’s stomach churned when he wondered how much longer that would be the case if the boy was to be tried as a pirate. “His appearance doesn’t contradict that claim.” 

“You aren’t intending to execute a ten-year-old, are you, my lord?” Roald chewed his lower lip, an undignified, nervous habit he had never quite been able to stifle. 

“No, but he will receive a long labor sentence in the quarries.” Lord Imrah’s tone was hard as granite harvested from the quarries he referred to where prisoners worked in brutal, dangerous drudgery, and few survived to the end of their sentences.

“That’s just sentences him to a slower death than hanging.” Roald couldn’t explain even to himself why he was championing the cause of a boy whose name he didn’t even know especially because any hopes he might harbor for the boy’s reform were almost certain to be disappointed. “It would be kinder to hang him and be done with it, sir.” 

“You might consider the quarries a crueler fate than hanging, lad, but I assure you most people sentenced to death plead for any chance at life, even a life in toil and chains.” Lord Imrah clearly wasn’t convinced by Roald’s argument, no doubt dismissing it as another brief burst of his squire’s Conte passion. 

“If you want to give the boy a chance at life, offer him an opportunity to reform himself and contribute to society instead of sending him to the quarries,” Roald insisted. “As lord of Legann, you can commute his sentence to labor somewhere else.” 

“I could.” Lord Imrah massaged his temples. “Why would I?” 

“The boy won’t last a month in the quarries, and he’s too scrawny to be effective moving massive stones.” Roald strove to sound calm and assured even as his heart was hammering in his chest. “Give him an option of entering into an apprenticeship agreement with a merchant or craftsman in Port Legann for ten years with all the usual stipulations against stealing and visiting taverns and brothels. Specify that if he violates the contract with his master, he will be sent to the quarries for the remainder of his sentence, but if he has the sense not to do that, he will learn a valuable trade so as to add to Port Legann’s economy for years. He’s more likely to repay what he has stolen from society as an apprentice than as a corpse in a quarry, my lord.” 

“No merchant or craftsman will want a boy raised among pirates living under their roof.” Lord Imrah pinched the bridge of his nose. “They’ll be terrified of being robbed blind and having their wives and children murdered in their sleep.” 

“If I could get a merchant or a craftsman to agree to take on the pirate boy, would you allow it, sir?” Roald asked, hoping that he could persuade the merchant who had married Emma, a friend of his who had once served as a lady’s maid to Lady Marielle, to accept the pirate’s boy as his apprentice. 

“If you assume responsibility for arranging such an agreement and understand that you have an obligation to do what you can to prevent this apprenticeship from being a disaster to whatever merchant or craftsman accepts it, then I will approve the contract and sentence substitution in court.” Lord Imrah’s fingers drummed his desk as he elaborated on his terms. 

“I swear by all the gods I will,” Roald promised, eyes earnest blue lanterns. “You won’t regret your decision, my lord.” 

“I’d better not.” Lord Imrah lifted a warning finger. “You might, though, once you discover how troublesome a ten-year-old boy, especially if brought up by pirates, can be.”


	6. A Rock and a Hard Place

A Rock and a Hard Place 

The hall of the guild to which Emma’s husband, the merchant Gregory Butcher, belonged was an ornate edifice hewn from rose-gold marble with azure flecks. Upon climbing the length of steps and entering the building with a pair of Lord Imrah’s guards at his heels, Roald found himself in a teeming atrium crowded with merchants discussing business and scribes hunched over tables recording negotiated trade deals. 

In this bustling atrium, apprenticeships were arranged though typically with members of the guild taking on one another’s sons as apprentices. Outsiders—even those with a prince for a patron—weren’t readily accepted as apprentices by merchants of the guild especially if those outsiders had once lived among pirates. 

“Excuse me.” Roald raised his voice to attract the attention of a merchant passing in a swirl of indigo robes. “I’m looking for Master Gregory Butcher. Do you know where I might find him, Master?” 

“He is over by the fountain, Your Highness.” Bowing from his waist, the merchant gestured at a tall man who appeared handsome even from a distance mingling with his fellow merchants beside a burbling fountain in the center of the atrium doubtlessly erected in homage to a particularly profitable guildmaster. 

“Thank you.” Roald smiled and nodded his gratitude. 

He parted from the merchant to approach the indicated man. As he neared the man who was Emma’s husband, Roald took a deep breath to ease the tension tightening his chest and reminded himself that anyone Emma chose to marry would be kind and generous. 

“Master Butcher.” Roald tried to strike the perfect balance of formal and friendly as he greeted Emma’s husband. “Good day. I wondered if we might have a word in private.” 

“I’m always available to speak with Your Highness.” Gregory Butcher bowed. As he emerged from his bow, he waved a palm toward the offices lining the left side of the atrium. “We might meet in my office.” 

At Roald’s nod, Gregory led the way to his office, where Lord Imrah’s guards assumed a post outside the door so Roald might talk with the merchant alone. 

“I have a ten-year-old boy who might prove a promising apprentice for you.” Roald strove to emphasize the knowledge and skills a lad might learn at sea among pirates as he slipped into the maple chair into which Gregory had urged him. “He knows sailing, the patterns of the winds and tides in the Emerald Ocean, and the value of many goods.” 

“Very useful knowledge for one so young.” Gregory tugged reflectively on his beard. “If he is such a promising lad, why does he require your patronage to find a position as an apprentice, Your Highness?” 

“He spent much of his childhood raised by pirates.” Refusing to flinch, Roald fixed his blue eyes on Gregory’s olive black ones. “He could be reformed under the guidance of an honorable man such as yourself, young and impressionable as he is, and Lord Imrah has promised that if he causes trouble for you, he’ll be banished to the quarries.” 

“What are you proposing exactly, Your Highness?” Gregory arched an eyebrow. 

“Instead of being sentenced to hard labor in the quarries for his involvement with the pirates, he’ll be apprenticed to you for ten years.” Roald was proud that there was no tremble in his words as he outlined the terms he had agreed upon with Lord Imrah. “His contract with you will contain all the standard prohibitions against getting drunk and engaging in any debauchery. If he violates his agreement with you, he’ll be shipped to the quarries to serve the remainder of his sentence.” 

“I have no wish to send the lad to the quarries.” Gregory sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “The guild, however, will not appreciate it if I accept a boy who is not only from outside the guild’s families but has a past of piracy as an apprentice, and I have enough of their enmity for being the son of a butcher instead of a respectable merchant.” 

“I’ll make a generous donation to the guild and pay you twice the usual apprentice fees if you accept the boy.” Roald decided that if he was in for a copper, he was in for a gold noble. He could only pray that one day the boy he was advocating for would prove worthy of the investment. 

“The usual apprentice fees would be fine for me, but the donation to the guild would be a wise decision, Your Highness.” Gregory gave a slight smile. “I’ll accept the boy as my apprentice for the standard fee with the contract stipulations you described for ten years.” 

“Thank you.” Roald struggled to express the depth of his appreciation. “I’ll always remember your compassion to a poor boy reared by pirates.” 

“You never failed to treat my Emma kindly.” Gregory’s smile widened, and Roald realized that perhaps no act of charity was ever truly wasted as seeds of generosity were planted that could be harvested later if famine seemed imminent. “I’m honored to be able to return the favor in some small way, Your Highness.” 

His meeting with Gregory concluded, Roald returned to Legann castle. Upon his arrival at the castle, he had Lord Imrah’s guards escort him to the dank, dark dungeons in the castle’s rotting underbelly. As soon as he walked into the dungeons, the stench of unwashed, sweating men and festering waste deluged his nostrils. Biting back a cough, Roald took a torch a sentry held out to him and followed the guard down the narrow passage between cells to the one where the ten-year-old boy was locked. 

The boy, chained and shivering against the cold, cringed from the light when Roald lifted his torch to the bars of the boy’s cell, striping the boy’s face in orange and black that illuminated the dirt mixed with tears on the boy’s filthy cheeks. 

“Are you a Black God’s acolyte?” The boy’s question made Roald remember that he was dressed in a black that he had believed would make him less obtrusive in Port Legann when he visited the guild hall. Apparently, the boy didn’t just have Jasson’s keen eyes. He had Jasson’s sharp mind and sharper tongue, which meant he would indeed be clever enough to flourish as a merchant’s apprentice. “Did the priests order you down here to tell me that the Black God is my only hope, and he’s the only friend I’m going to have when I dance to the end of my lord of Legann’s rope?” 

“He’s the Crown Prince,” snapped the guard behind Roald before Roald could reply. “You’ll address him with respect, or I’ll box your ears bloody.” 

“You won’t be dancing at the end of any rope.” Roald spoke softly in an effort not to intimidate the boy. “You’ll have a choice between the quarries or a ten year apprenticeship to a merchant.”

“Quarries are death.” The boy gnawed on a cracked lip. “Ten years is as long as I’ve been alive, though.” 

“At the end of it, you’ll be able to make your way as a merchant—to succeed in society and have fancy goods without stealing them,” Roald explained patiently, supposing that he couldn’t expect the boy to understand the magnitude of the mercy being extended to him. 

“Most boys would leap in joy at the opportunity to be apprenticed to a merchant, you ungrateful swine,” growled the guard, glaring at the fettered boy as if he desired nothing more than to pound him to a pulp. 

“I’ll be a merchant’s apprentice then.” The boy sounded as resigned to his fate as if a noose were being knotted around his thin neck, and Roald figured that in this shadowed dungeon it was impossible for the boy to perceive a prince as a face of grace rather than terror. “You call it a choice, but it’s the same as the one between a rock and a hard place, not meaning any disrespect that will get my ears boxed bloody, of course.”


	7. Gallows Hill

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry this chapter was so delayed in posting. At first, my inspiration for it failed, and then I forgot about it, but I finally was inspired and had a burst of memory. Hopefully the chapter turned out well despite the delay. I will try to have the final chapter up much quicker. Thank you for your patience and understanding!

Gallows Hill

“The court will come to order.” Lord Imrah’s gavel hammered down, startling Roald with the sharpness of the sound. The audience of seamen who smelled of salt mingled with ale, artisans who carried the scent of sweat and their craft, and merchants always proud as peacocks in their perfumed finery fell silent at once, abandoning their gleeful speculations on the grim fates awaiting the dirty prisoners chained in the docket before Lord Imrah. 

Piracy was ever a matter of extreme, widespread interest in a port city dependent on safe trade, but this fascination inevitably rose to a fever pitch when Lord Imrah presided over a trial himself instead of delegating it to a magistrate to adjudicate in his name. His knightmaster looked so magisterial as he sat in judgment that Roald wondered if he would ever be able to project such calm, fair, and unquestionable authority. 

The railing around his gleaming gold as the disc dedicated to Mithros that shone in the sunlight streaming through the windows behind his head, Lord Imrah went on curtly, addressing the man who had led the pirate raids, “Drew Bernardson, you and your compatriots stand accused of piracy, a crime that upon conviction bears a sentence of death by hanging. How do you plead?” 

“Innocent, of course, milord.” Drew hacked up an impressive wad of phlegm, which he spat onto the courtroom floor. Roald pitied the maids who must scrub the floor after the trial finished and didn’t mind the harsh cuff the guard behind Drew delivered to his ears as much as he otherwise might have. Massaging his ears, Drew gazed impishly about the courtroom. “I’m an honest merchant like many gathered here today, and these men around me are naught but the hard-working sailors I hire to transport my goods across the Emerald Ocean.” 

There was an outbreak of outraged protest from the merchants at this pirate’s inflammatory comparison of his business to theirs but order was restored after Lord Imrah’s gavel pounded again. 

“Innocent merchants don’t take up arms against a lord and his soldiers enforcing the Crown’s laws.” Lord Imrah’s voice rang clear as a bell across the hushed courtroom. “Innocent merchants don’t have ships laden with men, women, and children imprisoned for sale in the Copper Isles and Carthak. Innocent merchants don’t have chests full of objects they have no record of acquiring. The last practice would render a merchant criminally dishonest, while the first two offenses are sufficient to brand him an outlaw and pirate deserving of death by hanging. Your accomplices who likewise took up arms against enforcers of the Crown’s justice and stole people with the intent of selling them into slavery are judged equally guilty of piracy.” 

Roald’s chest tightened, knowing what sentence his knightmaster would pronounce before Lord Imrah’s gavel cracked load as a snapping spine. “You and your compatriots are sentenced to be taken up Gallows Hill at first light tomorrow, where you and your accomplices will be hanged by the neck until dead. Your corpses will remain as a rotting display in the harbor to discourage any dreams of piracy in others. You’ll serve as a moral example in death as you never could in life. May the Black God have mercy on your souls.” 

“Speaking of mercy”—Lord Imrah’s stern glance fixed upon the docket, studying one pale prisoner’s face after another before locking on the ten-year-old boy Roald had negotiated for—“I’m willing to offer you some on account of your youth, lad. Speak your name for the record and tell us how you fell into piracy.” 

“I’m Adam Fisher.” Adam’s green eyes were wide as oceans but no fear emanated from him despite the threat of hanging. “Da died at sea in a storm, and Ma followed not longer after from grief and a winter chill. I would’ve starved if Drew Bernardson hadn’t said he’d feed and clothe me if I served as his cabin boy.” 

“You’ll serve as Master Gregory Butcher’s apprentice for ten years with all the standard prohibitions against crime, running away, idleness, drunkenness, and debauchery. Any violations of your contract with Master Butcher will result in the remainder of your sentence spent laboring in the quarries.” When Lord Imrah’s gavel cracked, Adam did flinch, Roald observed. Something about the implacability of the gavel must have rattled him. 

Lord Imrah waved a hand at the sentry behind Adam. “Release the boy from his chains that he might be surrendered to his master’s charge. He and his master will sign the contract detailing the terms of his service, and then this session of court will be concluded.” 

Roald watched Adam sign the document that dictated his life for the next ten years and then leave the courtroom with his master’s arm about his shoulders, parting the gossips that hissed like snakes in the aisle. He told himself that the boy would flourish and come to know true, law-abiding happiness under Master Butcher’s guidance. 

Before dawn the next day found him in Legann castle’s stables. He had already prepared his knightmaster’s mount but he was dallying in readying his own steed in the vain hope that if he delayed long enough, Lord Imrah would leave without him and he wouldn’t have to witness the impending execution on Gallows Hill. 

“Must I go, my lord?” Roald asked, fingers slowly cinching the buckles of his saddle shut around Shadow. 

“You’re the Crown Prince, Roald.” Lord Imrah gazed down from his stallion at Roald, whose face flushed at the admonishment and the duties his knightmaster doubtlessly believed he was trying to avoid. “People expect the Crown Prince to witness justice, not hide his face from it. You’ll accompany me without further argument, complaint, or attempt to dodge your duty.” 

“My stomach aches, sir.” Roald scuffed his shoes through the hay carpeting the stable floor. He wished that Lord Imrah would relent and allow him to remain at the castle with the still recovering Alan or with Lady Marielle and Julienne, the younger daughter deemed too delicate to attend an execution. His stomach was indeed squirming as it always did before any execution his parents made him witness to ready him for rule, and he was grateful that he had more nudged his breakfast around his plate than eaten it or else he would have been repeating it in a most unappetizing fashion. 

“That’s because you picked at your breakfast like a peevish bird instead of eating it.” Lord Imrah was sharp and unsympathetic as a falcon’s beak. “Mount up please.” 

Roald obeyed his knightmaster’s command but couldn’t contain a mutinous mutter. “No, it’s because I’m going to watch a hanging.” 

“Pirates who murdered villagers, kidnapped innocents to be sold into slavery, and stole any valuables they could plunder will be hanged according to the law.” Lord Imrah’s lips thinned to a knife’s edge as they rode out of the stables toward Gallows Hill. “I hope you aren’t disputing my right to administer justice on my own lands, squire.” 

“I’m not disputing anything, my lord.” Roald understood that a lord’s power on his lands was almost as absolute and untouchable as a king’s but that didn’t prevent him from scowling at his saddle horn. Sometimes it seemed that, although he was a prince and heir to the kingdom, he had wasted his entire existence since he had learned to string sentences together in silence—forever ordered to listen to his elders and obey without debate or question. He tried to be dutiful and respectful, quiet and compliant, but sometimes the confines he chose to conform to rather than resist most of the time felt too oppressive, too much of a gilded cage for him not to yearn for a freedom he could never know as a prince. 

Despite his scowl, his response satisfied Lord Imrah, and they traveled in silence to the top of Gallows Hill up the dusty road teeming with people eagerly discussing the imminent execution. At the crest of the hill, Roald saw families eating breakfast on blankets while children chased each other across the grass and climbed the scattered, scraggly trees that managed to grown in the sandy soil and briny breeze that swept off the ocean. 

The incredible industriousness of the vendors in Port Legann was demonstrated by the dozens of makeshift stalls erected, selling savory meat pies, sweet pastries, and fresh oysters. The shouts of the vendors and the competing smells of their wares, which more suited a fair than an execution, caused waves of nausea to crash inside Roald, threatening to drown him in vomit. 

He fought the bile that burned up his throat even as his focus shifted to the line of men on the bluff’s stony edge, nooses tied tight about their necks as they waited for the masked execution to push them into their final, fatal plunge. Roald scratched at his own neck, contemplating how it would feel to have a noose tied there, unable to be dislodged no matter how fiercely he clawed. How did it feel to have proof of how limited your last breaths were as you stared across the endless expanse of the Emerald Ocean as the day of your death dawned? Eternity, he decided, must feel a heartbeat away, and in a chilly rather than comforting sense. 

“Our executioner knows his business, Roald.” Lord Imrah, noticing where Roald’s gaze was fastened, leaned over to murmur in Roald’s ear, voice barely audible over the hawking of vendors and the wind whipping off the water. “Their ends will come quick, and they’ll suffer much less than those they killed. This will be justice, not vengeance.” 

“Yes, sir,” agreed Roald absently, his attention morbidly captured by the Black God’s priests who were praying swiftly over each of the condemned men who would soon be judged in the great court of Mithros for their mortal crimes. 

When the priests stepped away from the men doomed to die, Lord Imrah nodded at the executioner, earning lusty cheers and applause from the crowd that had flocked to the morning’s execution as if it were a Player’s performance for their entertainment. 

The executioner paused before the first prisoner—seeking forgiveness as custom demanded; the forgiveness was sometimes granted and other times refused in a final fit of spite—and Roald couldn’t reconcile the fact that the executioner needed to hide his face with his idea of justice. He stared out over the Emerald Ocean that appeared to blush shell pink in shame of the brutality on the bluff, and Roald’s heart hurt at the contrast between almost ethereal natural beauty and human ugliness. It occurred to him as the sun stretched across the sky that there was nothing wrong with the world except what people had done to it in the grip of their selfish passions. 

He didn’t watch as the first man was hanged but he did hear a crack like water against rock that assured him the man’s vertebrae had snapped in a quick death rather than a torturously slow strangulation. 

“Don’t look away, lad.” Roald was distracted from the executions by Master Butcher wrestling Adam Fisher’s chin toward the pirates on the gallows. “See the nasty end that pirates come to and resolve to live a more honest life in the future. Take it as a warning and be grateful for Lord Imrah’s mercy that you aren’t among those being hanged today.” 

Adam, Roald saw, stood rigid as a soldier in his master’s grasp but closed his eyes rather than look at the executions though that didn’t stop him from howling when the man who had taken him as cabin boy was shoved to his death by the hooded executioner. The boy’s broken cry, Roald knew, would resound in his ears for a long time, eerier than any cracked neck of the hanged. If this was justice, as Lord Imrah insisted, it had left him drained and miserable to the marrow.


	8. Rocky Redemption

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This marks the end of the story. Thank you to all who had the patience to pursue it to the end! I hope the conclusion is satisfactory and enjoyable to all:)

Rocky Reconciliation 

“The execution must have been wonderful.” Alan was perkier with a healthy blush to his cheeks that hadn’t been present the last time Roald had visited him, which Roald chose to interpret as a hopeful sign that Alan would be recovered and released from the infirmary soon. 

When Roald offered no response beyond a noncommittal noise (that was close to a grunt but wasn’t exactly one since Master Oakbridge had hammered into his head that grunting was for pigs, not princes), Alan pressed, determined to draw Roald into his chatter, “Wasn’t it spectacular entertainment, Roald?” 

“The people watching seemed to think so.” Roald spoke rather stiffly as he shifted in search of a comfortable spot that he suspected didn’t exist on the hard wooden chair he had pulled to Alan’s bedside. 

Taking a slightly quieter tone that suggested an attempt at sobriety as if worried Roald disapproved of his levity, Alan added, “Of course, it was justice too, wasn’t it?” 

Roald wondered if it had ever crossed Alan’s mind that if Roald’s father had followed the letter of the law, Alan would never have been conceived because the man who would have been his father would have been hanged for a thief long ago. Since Roald didn’t need his own father to explain to him how tactless such a question would be, he settled for a much more diplomatic answer. “To the letter of the law.” 

That meant it had to be right—or at least as near to any objective standard of right as flawed mortals could come—Roald figured but that didn’t mean it couldn’t break something inside him to witness it. Papa would have understood that even if Lord Imrah couldn’t because it would’ve shattered something inside Papa to sign a death warrant for a friend so he had instead prepared a royal pardon. 

“I wish I could’ve seen the hangings.” Alan punched a pillow with the fist attached to his uninjured shoulder. “After all the crimes they were guilty of, it would’ve been satisfying to watch justice done to them.” 

Roald was currently convinced that justice was more heart-wrenching than satisfying but since such a morose observation was unlikely to improve the spirit of a boy trapped in an infirmary, he switched the subject. “Since you couldn’t see justice done, is there anything I might bring to satisfy you instead?” 

“Depends.” Alan’s hazel green eyes sparkled with mischief. “How far are you willing to travel?” 

“For you, to the corners of the world and back again,” replied Roald dryly. 

“By that, you mean Port Legann,” Alan quipped. “Well, if you’re truly willing, please get me a Carthaki orange. I’ve been craving that sweet citrus tang.” 

“One Carthaki orange on the way.” Roald rose, welcoming an excuse to abandon the hard chair and venture to the bustling markets of Port Legann where the crowds could jostle the uneasy ideas out of his head. 

“My hero.” Alan clutched at his chest like a damsel in distress out of a fairy tale. 

Refusing to dignify such folly with a response, Roald took his leave. After gathering the pair of guards Lord Imrah required to accompany him whenever he walked about the city, he headed down to one of Port Legann’s thriving, salt-scented marketplaces. 

Once there, it didn’t take him longer than an eye blink to locate a vendor hawking fruit fresh from Carthak. As he rummaged through a crate of oranges on a quest for the perfect one for Alan, he noticed that the woman picking lemons from the box beside him looked familiar. He would always recognize that auburn hair even if it was now braided into a married woman’s beribboned buns over both her ears rather than worn loose in ringlets as it had been when she served as a lady’s maid in Lord Imrah’s household. 

“Emma?” Roald squinted at her through the strong sunlight off the ocean that threatened to blind him. “Well met.” 

“Your Highness.” Emma dropped a lemon back into the crate and slid into a curtsy. “A pleasure to see you again.” 

“It’s been too long.” Roald smiled. “How have you and your husband been?” 

“We’re in good health.” Emma’s return grin was crooked. “My husband’s new apprentice runs him ragged, however. Quite the headstrong and challenging charge you’ve given us, if it’s not too bold for me to say, and I know headstrong and challenging from my own temperament very well.” 

“My apologies.” Roald grimaced at the not necessarily unanticipated but distinctly unwelcome information that Adam was already proving a trial to the master who had taken him in when nobody else would have. “What has the boy done?” 

“Only been so surly every moment that my husband is tempted to beat him.” Emma inspected a lemon and nodded in approval of its quality. “That’s a significant achievement because my husband is never tempted to beat anyone else in our household.” 

“I could try to talk some sense into the lad if you and your husband don’t mind.” Roald was acutely aware that it was his duty in accordance with his agreement with Lord Imrah to ensure that Adam’s apprenticeship to Master Butcher progressed as amicably as possible. In a way, Adam was as much Roald’s responsibility as he was Master Butcher’s, and Roald didn’t intend to be slack in fulfilling his obligations to Adam or Master Butcher. Nobody would trust a prince who failed to keep his promises. A prince’s word must be unimpeachable, Papa had taught him. 

“Of course we don’t mind.” Emma waved a dismissive hand laden with lemons. “In fact, we’d appreciate it very much if you did.” 

“I’ll join you when you return to your house then.” Roald selected an orange for Alan that smelled scrumptious enough to water Roald’s mouth. Once he paid the vendor for the fruit, he turned to one of the guards who had escorted him to the marketplace and, passing him the orange, requested, “Would you kindly bring this up to Alan in the infirmary?” 

“At once, Your Highness.” The guard bowed and melted into the throng trading gossip and goods in the teeming square. 

Trailed by his remaining guard, Roald accompanied Emma to her house, a large three-story with many windows all of glass to reflect the status of the wealthy merchant family inhabiting it. When Emma unlocked the door and they entered into a parlor, Master Butcher, who had been studying an account with a furrowed forehead, rose from a sofa with a bow. 

“Master Butcher.” Roald nodded a formal greeting as Master Butcher emerged from his bow. “I hope you’re well. Might I speak with Adam?” 

“Certainly, Your Highness. I’d never seek to prevent you from speaking with any in my household, though I caution you that the lad is still rough around the edges having been under my guidance for a short time and may not display appropriate appreciation for your rank and the favor you bestowed upon him.” Establishing as much, Master Butcher shouted toward an ajar door that appeared to lead into a candlelit office, “Adam, come here!” 

“I still haven’t finished the calculations you set me.” Adam’s languid tone implied that he hadn’t been straining himself over the calculations his master had assigned him. 

“It’s taken him all day to solve a dozen simple sums,” Master Butcher muttered, shaking his head. To Adam, he called, “You can finish them later. Now you have another duty to attend to so come at once.” 

As Adam stepped out of the office, Roald could hear him griping, “What a surprise that I’ve another duty that I must complete at once.” 

“You’re in the presence of a prince.” Master Butcher’s eyes were blazing as his reprimand to his grousing apprentice. “Bow and stop grumbling.” 

“Forgive me.” Adam gave an irritable jerk that obviously constituted his notion of a bow. “I forgot I don’t have the freedom in this house that I did on the ocean.” 

“Freedom to do what?” Master Butcher snapped. “To rob and murder your neighbors? I’m not sorry you no longer have that liberty under my roof.” 

“I meant freedom to speak my mind.” Adam ducked his head as if something in his master’s words had struck him. “Free to choose my own actions.” 

Deciding that this reference to speaking was as decent an opening as he was going to receive, Roald inserted himself into the conversation. “Adam, I wanted to talk to you. Outside in the garden perhaps?” 

Silently, sullenly, Adam followed Roald out the door into the front garden. Once they were seated on a bench skirted by blossoming flowers, Roald remarked, trying to sound authoritative but not accusing, “I’ve heard that you’re being surly with your master, Adam.” 

“Of course I am.” Adam snorted like an irascible horse. “I hate him, Your Highness.” 

“You barely know him.” Roald was astonished by the boy’s bluntness and appalled by his spitefulness. A lad who had lived among pirates had no grounds on which to judge a law-abiding man who had invited him into his home, in Roald’s opinion. “How can you hate someone you barely know who was generous enough to take you in when nobody else would?” 

“Somebody else did take me in.” Adam was trembling, and Roald could see that his hands were balled into fists. “He was just killed, and I was made to watch, helpless to save him, by the man you say I can’t know enough to hate, Your Highness. You wouldn’t understand how horrible it is to have to witness the execution of a man who was a father to you and then be told that you should be grateful to the people killing him—that the ones hanging him are your saviors, taking you in when no one else would have when they’ve ruined your life and stolen everybody you cared about—but I do.” 

Roald was stunned by the depths of Adam’s resentment for what was ultimately a just—if harsh—punishment. When he could muster control of his tongue, he pointed out mildly, refusing to answer the other boy’s anger with his own, “Adam, you must realize that hanging is the fate that awaits pirates. Master Butcher believed you had to see that so you’d grasp why you shouldn’t commit any crimes that could end in hanging.” 

“Meaning it was all for my own good, and he was only being cruel to be kind.” Adam’s mouth twitched into a sneer. 

“Exactly.” Roald ignored Adam’s sarcasm and acted as if the lad were speaking in earnest. “He has a duty to you as you do to yourself. You’ve an opportunity to create a successful future for yourself but to do that you’re going to have to forgive the people you think have wronged you and turn your back on crime. I saved you from the quarries because I saw a potential—a life—in you that shouldn’t be wasted. Don’t prove me wrong by squandering your chance to build a meaningful life.” 

Adam chewed his lip, contemplating this for a long moment. At last, he muttered, “I’ll try to be less surly because the man who was like a father to me would want me to do whatever I had to in order to survive and better myself, Your Highness.” 

“Excellent.” Roald stood but couldn’t resist commenting, “If you’re interested in being less surly, you should be aware that muttering and all forms of mumbling and grumbling are often regarded as surly especially by masters.” 

“So many manners to learn and so little time.” Adam wrinkled his nose but when he stepped inside, he had composed his features into seriousness as he announced, “Master Butcher, I promise to try to be less surly and more obedient.” 

“Good lad.” Master Butcher reached out to clasp Adam’s shoulders and Roald began to truly hope that they might be reconciled despite their rocky start. “I’ll try to be more patient with you and consider things from your perspective more than I’ve been.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Adam’s eyes were wide with shock or maybe hope as they gazed up at his master. 

“You must’ve been loyal to the man who was once your master.” Master Butcher studied Adam speculatively as if he were seeing the boy for the first time and perhaps he was. 

“Yes, sir.” Adam’s chin lifted. Plainly he wasn’t ashamed of his pirate past or his hanged surrogate father. “I was.” 

“Loyalty is an admirable trait but it can be painful and perilous if we place our faith in the wrong people.” Master Butcher sighed. “Perhaps one day you’ll be as loyal to me as you were to your old master and understand that I only had your wellbeing at heart even when I might have miscalculated.” 

“Sir?” Adam head, cocked in confusion, was a question mark. 

“I might have miscalculated—been too severe with you—when I forced you to watch your old master’s execution just as you miscalculated in living among pirates.” Master Butcher removed his right hand from Adam’s shoulder to extend it to his apprentice. “When people miscalculate, they need a blank slate to fix their errors. I’m willing to grant you one if you’ll do the same for me.” 

“Deal.” Adam’s grin was mirrored in his eyes as he took the offered hand and shook it. 

Satisfied that his work in Master Butcher’s house was accomplished, Roald said his farewells and returned to Legann castle. As he made his way up to the castle, the thought that he should seek out his knightmaster for his own reconciliation gained such traction that when he arrived he tracked down Lord Imrah in the mews. 

“Roald.” Lord Imrah glanced up from stroking a falcon’s breast with a gloved finger. “Nice of you to join me.” 

“My lord.” Roald swallowed the awkwardness that threatened to choke his courage. “I’ve been a wayward squire. I’ve questioned your authority and complained about your orders and my duties. I apologize and humbly ask your forgiveness.” 

“Your apology is appreciated and accepted. My forgiveness, as ever, was given before you asked it.” Lord Imrah’s gaze was filled with such affection and understanding that Roald was mystified that he ever had the compulsion to defy his knightmaster. “I know executions frustrate you since you perceive them as failures to save people but you should also be proud of how you rescued and advocated for a boy who might have fallen in with bad company more than been irredeemably wicked himself. I’m proud of you for that.” 

“Thank you, sir.” Roald inclined his head, torn inwardly between embarrassment and joy at his knightmaster’s praise. “I’ve only tried to be a credit to your education.” 

“You’ve succeeded.” Lord Imrah gave a short nod of approval then added after a brief pause, “I hope you understand, Roald, that my instruction has always been aimed toward giving you—and the kingdom you’ll inherit—a bright future.” 

“I do, and I appreciate that”—Roald smiled wryly, amusing himself with a joke at his own expense—“at least when I’m not grumbling under my breath.” 

“You wouldn’t be a proper squire if you didn’t grumble under your breath from time to time.” Lord Imrah chuckled, and Roald relished the sound that confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt they were in harmony—as knightmaster and squire should be—again. They were, for however fleeting an interval, living and breathing the ideal.


End file.
